<p>Ok so people are always taking about good teacher/counselor recs and bad ones?</p>
<p>what do they exactly mean a good one like what constitutes as good can some one please post an example???????????</p>
<p>Most people never see their recs and have no idea whether they're good or bad. Even if they see their recs, they likely don't really know enough about the process to benchmark how good they are.</p>
<p>That being said, nobody has bad recs. You just need to find two teachers who like you and can say good things about you, and pretty much every applicant can find two such teachers.</p>
<p>Most recs are "good" in that they say positive things about the student, but they aren't "great" because they're often generic/unoriginal, unsupported (it doesn't do any good for the teacher to say that you're brilliant if she can't prove to Columbia WHY you're brilliant), regurgitations of things that are already on your application (what good grades you have and what great ECs you do), etc.</p>
<p>The great recs do not suffer from these pitfalls and are relatively rare. The teacher who writes a great rec not only tells Columbia that you're wonderful but is able to articulate specific examples/stories/anecdotes to prove that she knows you well and has a strong basis for saying that you're wonderful.</p>
<p>Try writing a recommendation for that kid in your 11th grade English class you shared notes with after class, said hi to whenever you passed him/her in the hallway, and ate lunch with once in a while... no matter how hard you try, it's not going to have much visceral force... you may sugar it up with nice comments, straining for some personal details, but it'll come across as uninspiring at best, superficial at worst.</p>
<p>Now try writing a recommendation for your best friend, the kid you knew best through high school, with whom you chilled whenever school let out, the one you called whenever anything big happened... it's going to come across really well, even if you're not a great writer. It'll have the benefit of a powerful relationship to back it up.</p>
<p>In the same way, if you just get a teacher whose class you got an 'A' in to give you a rec, but you hardly ever spoke to him/her outside of class, there were no special projects you worked on which required a lot more interaction than usual... it smacks of the former kind of recommendation. The teacher, on the other hand, whom you accosted in the hallway to argue (amicably) with about the latest big paper, or spent time with in anticipation of that school play the two of you organized... that's going to be the kind of recommendation which, as columbia2002 said, will tell Columbia that "you're wonderful but is able to articulate specific examples/stories/anecdotes to prove [it]". </p>
<p>A great recommendation is like a great novel, or a great piece of music: everyone knows it's fantastic without necessarily being able to explain what went into making it so superlative. No amount of breaking down the technical structures or the 'procedures' of acquiring the 'material' will serve to explain why Bob Dylan is timeless and Britney Spears is a product, why Kafka is KAKFA and Danielle Steele is, well, Danielle Steele.</p>
<p>In sum... you know deep within exactly what a bad, a good, or a great recommendation is. You really don't need people on an internet forum telling you what they are. I just like talking a lot. Hence my lengthy explanation.</p>
<p>Peace</p>